Doomed youth and the Factories of Manchester: Identity, music, media and social culture in a northern city, 1976-1997

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Doomed youth and the Factories of Manchester:

Identity, music, media and social culture in a northern city,

1976-1997

MA European Studies

Graduate School of Humanities University of Amsterdam

June 2015

Student: Walt van der Hoeven Studentno.: 6139191

Study: Master European Studies: Culture and Identity Supervisor: dr. K. Lajosi

2nd Supervisor:

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Foreword

Nietzsche said in his Twilight of the Idols that: “without music, life would be a mistake“.1 For some people, like me, this is very much true. When trying to come up with a subject for a thesis, the first thing that sprung into mind was the Manchester music scene of the 1980s. The musical history of this city has always intrigued me greatly and it has spawned some of the best music ever made (in my opinion). The love for this music and the history of Manchester as a pop cult city resulted in me wanting to find a way to write about it, and this thesis is the result of it. There are two ways to read this thesis, which is accompanied by a cd. One way is to read it without paying attention to the footnotes and go through it in one take. The second one, the one that is advised, is by looking at the footnotes carefully. Some of the notes are accompanied by a song, which you are able to play while reading the thesis.

This thesis is not about music, it is not an appraisal of music, but music might create a clearer and better picture of what happened in Manchester from 1976 until into the 1990s. Therefore listening to the music whilst reading the thesis enhances the thesis as a whole.

This thesis can be divided into three main parts. Part one is a description of life before Manchester became a famous pop cult city. It describes life in a city in decline and embraces themes of industrialization, economy, social culture and politics. The second part of this thesis is a description of Manchester music, where it all started and how it ended. It is about who was who, and what was what in the days Manchester’s pop culture revolution. The final part of this thesis tries to combine the first and second parts in an analysis of how it was possible that Manchester became such a hub for pop culture in the world for almost two decades. It deals with themes in youth culture, sociology, identity, communities and the role that media and companies played in it all.

1_{F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize With the}

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Introduction:

Where it all began

The first chords of Did You No Wrong by the London punk band The Sex Pistols start and as singer Johnny Rotten sings ‘I don’t’ mind the things that you say, I don’t mind going out of my way’, a crowd of about forty people starts to move.2 It is 1976 and we are in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, this is where it all started. What comes out of the speaker just sounds like white noise, and the singer is a degenerate with no charming voice at all. This is the gig that changed the world however, at least according to many musicians and music critics.3 This is the concert that would put a label on Manchester as the world’s biggest pop cult city for at least 15 years, maybe longer.

Manchester was a city of industrial and economic failure in the seventies. People did not want to be there, let alone live there. It was a grey, dark and dull city in decline. All of this changed when the city became famous for its music around 1980. Manchester became the music capital of the world for a while and everyone who wanted to be someone in the scene, was somehow connected with the Northern city. Record sales soar and the commercial value of Mancunian bands, artists and writers with it. This phenomenon went on until into the nineties when the sales stagnated and the Mancunian reputation was soiled by slowly converging events.

But let us go back to the start, to 1976. Men like Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner (Joy Division and New Order), Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto (The Buzzcocks) and Steven Patrick Morrissey (The Smiths) attended the Sex Pistols gig in 1976 and thought to themselves that if this was music, and it attracted crowds, then even they were able to get up on stage and create music.4 Tony Wilson, who other than being a Cambridge student with a degree in English Literature, was also a music enthusiast and attended the second gig of the Sex Pistols, held on the twentieth of July. After having seen the Pistols

2

The Sex Pistols- Did You No Wrong, Live at Chelmsford Top Security Prison, Play Thesis cd #1.

3

P. Morley, The Sex Pistols play the Lesser Free Hall: all of indie Manchester sees the future of music: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/14/sex-pistols-lesser-free-hall, (accessed 17-03-2015).

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and bands such as the Buzzcocks perform, he would later put them on his music show So It Goes.5 Wilson’s role in the Manchester music scene and the commercialisation of the Manchester scene is of importance.

Manchester, being known as an industrial city, was not the most pleasant town to live in, not in the sixties, not in the seventies, not in the eighties. It was from these living conditions that a music culture started which got a big reputation all over the world. How this happened, what it exactly was and how this stayed in place for such a long time are some of the questions that have a central role in this thesis.

Bands such as Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Durutti Column, Section 25, Simply Red, Inspiral Carpets, The Fall, James, 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald and many others were the stars of the industrial city in the 1980s. From around 1978 until into the nineties Manchester was the country’s and maybe even the world’s biggest music city. The musicians from the biggest city of the English northwest showed that from a grey, murky city with dark streets, rows of concrete flats and disgusting public spaces, achieving greatness was possible. A strong Mancunian musical and cultural identity was upheld for more than a decade. Noel Gallagher (Oasis and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds) told John Robb in his book The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1977-1996 the following:

‘Of Course the Stone Roses come from Manchester, where else could they be from? Where else could The Smiths and Joy Divison be from? Where else could Ian Curtis be from? Where else could Factory Records be from? Where else could the Haçienda be? It was so fucking

natural. That was an amazing amount of music for such a tiny place in northern England. It was so special: all the bands, all the fashion, all the great

writers, all the great people coming out of this city. People say to me round the world, What is it about Manchester? And I say, I don’t know.’6

5_{BBC 4, Factory Records: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays, 2007.} 6_{J. Robb, The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1977-1996, London: Aurum}

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Why does Gallagher say ‘of course’? Just like many articles, biographies and historical works about the musical phenomenon of Manchester in the 1980s, Noel Gallagher leaves us with no answers. This sort of idea, that music is magic, and has nothing to with things such as geography, identity and marketing is too simple and offers no explanation to phenomena such as Madchester.7

There is a lot written on the Manchester music scene, histories, biographies, articles, papers and many more. These are all very general and descriptive works. They give the reader a description of what it was like in Manchester in those days, and which bands played where, who was who and who was there to witness it all. It seems as if there are countless of these types of works. The number of works about the Manchester music scene that combine the fields of social studies, marketing, music studies and cultural studies into one work is limited.

What was it that kept this strong music force in its place for so long? From what background can such a scene be born? Why did a city that was at an economic, cultural and social low, attract such a big crowd and have such a big commercial value? The Manchester music scene stayed a strong entity until into the nineties, when it all stagnated and the city’s music culture lost its charm. It was not meant to live forever, and rightly so. If it had survived it would never have achieved the cult status it has today. How it all ended will be a subject examined in the later chapters. The reasons behind the final decline can be contributed to many things, one of which was the spiralling drug problems and drug wars in the city.8 Another can be the decline of one of the city’s biggest cultural and musical forces, Tony Wilson’s Factory Records and all it represented. This thesis will venture back into Manchester during the glory days of the pop cult city and investigate why and how this phenomenon was retained during this period, and what caused its downfall. There are many who say that what happened between 1976 and the mid-nineties in Manchester was inevitable, and that it could only

7

J. Connell & C. Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London: Routledge 2003, p. ix.

8_{D. Haslam, Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City, London: Fourth Estate}

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have happened in Manchester. How did the city shift from an industrial space to a cultural space with a strong cultural identity?9

9_{N. Redfern, “We Do Things Differently Here:” Manchester as a Cultural Region in 24}

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Part 1:

1.1 ‘Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools’

It must not have been a pretty sight, Manchester in the late sixties and throughout the seventies. In a country where the class system was still very present, this industrial labourer’s city was the finest example of the struggle of the lower classes. Ghastly neighbourhoods like Hulme and Moss Side were not the best and safest places to grow up as a child. Hulme was a notorious neighbourhood from its finished renovation in 1972 onwards. It was a neighbourhood swarming with poor, elderly and homeless people where there was a lot of alcohol and drug abuse. There was no control from any sort of local authority, and vandalism and crime were mostly ignored. In comparison with the rest of Great Britain, people in Hulme were seven times more likely to commit suicide, thirty one times more likely to be a victim of a crime and forty-one times more likely to be actually murdered.10 Hulme redevelopment was a drastic failure. The demolition of the old row houses the building of gigantic grey apartment buildings was a mistake on the part of the city.

The seventies were a tough decade for Britain and the North especially. Alcoholics Anonymous counselled around 6,300 people in Britain in 1971, this number rose to 35,000 in 1986.11 It was a depressing decade for a lot of people. Those who were hit hardest were, as always, the lowest in society, a lot of who worked and lived in Manchester. Factories in decline, still running twenty-four hours per day, covering the city in a thickish, grey smoke that everyone in Manchester inhales, small houses with no gardens in streets not wider than three meters, public areas too dirty to imagine and schools with strict and uncaring teachers and headmasters. Morrissey sings about the horrible school system in The Smiths’ song Headmaster Ritual.

‘Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools, spineless swines, cemented minds. Sir leads the troops, jealous of youth, same old suit since 1962. He does the military two-step down the nape of my neck. I

10

C. Moobela, ‘From worst slum to best example of regeneration:

Complexity in the regeneration of Hulme, Manchester’, E:CO, No. 1 (2005) p. 37.

11_{G. Finlayson, Citizen, State, and Welfare in Britain, 1830-1990, Oxford: Clarendon}

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want to go home, I don't want to stay, give up education as a bad mistake.’12

This was the Manchester from which arose a very strong pop culture, the Manchester in which Morrissey, Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Ian Brown, Shaun Ryder and many other musicians grew up. Morrissey in his Autobiography gives one of the best descriptions of the surroundings in which the doomed youth of Manchester grew up. Here he tells the tails of regular beatings, grim and grey streets and the terrible school system of Manchester in the 1960s and ‘1970s. Morrissey, in his poetic tone, paints a very dark and depressing picture of Manchester, there was no green of trees or parks in sight and it was all just streets and more streets filled with horrid dark and empty houses. The whole first chapter of Morrissey’s autobiography is a dedication to the grim streets of Manchester in his childhood:

‘The safe streets are dimly lit, the others are not lit at all, but both represent a danger that you’re asking for should you find yourself out there once curtains have closed for tea. Past places of dread…looking up at the torn wallpapers of browny blacks and purples as the mournful remains of derelict shoulder-to-shoulder houses, their safety now replaced by trepidation.’13

In the public Catholic schools that Morrissey went to (he is from Irish heritage) teachers hit boys regularly and mistreated them in many other ways, a dreamy kid like Steven Morrissey would regularly be laughed at, mocked and also be hit with a stick.14 There was no room to be different in the public school system of Manchester; everyone was stuck in their own cemented minds. Not all schools might have been as dreadful as the one that Morrissey went to, but this does give a description of the city in the sixties and seventies. In these days, the city was in a bad state, and it seemed like the youth had no future. Children left the public or

12

The Smiths – The Headmaster Ritual,Meat is Murder, London: Rough Trade 1985, play Thesis cd #2.

13_{S.P. Morrissey, Morrissey: Autobiography, London: Penguin Classics 2013, p. 3.} 14_{S.P. Morrissey, Morrissey: Autobiography, p. 55.}

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private school system feeling empty and useless: ‘In their God-fearing, chanting morality, the teachers of St. Mary’s only managed to convey nihilism and limericks. Look for one boy who left the place feeling spiritual and complete. You will never find him.’15 It was dark, dull and the coming economic crisis would not make this any better. Childhood is an important time for he creation of a person’s identity, to which music is a great contributor. Children get music lessons and are given a curriculum in music. School is an important social context where children are introduced to the value of music and what it is about.16 Children are easily influenced and at a young age music already helps them to define themselves in relation to others. The combination of a raw, industrial city and an easily influenced child might have been the cause for the development of such a strong musical identity in Manchester. The state of the city and its decline is therefore just as important as the music that came from the city.

Manchester had been the industrial centre of the world for a long time. In neighbourhoods like Ancoats, production went on twenty-four hours per day. During the industrialization in Britain the class system was very apparent, you had those who worked, and their bosses. This was called the ‘Two nations’ of the Victorian age.17 In this time the social awareness of the ‘workers’ was not very good. They did not do much about their position in society in being in the lower classes. But the social awareness of these people would improve over time. Media and politics would play a vital role in this.

Britain’s economy had been in decline since the Victorian age, when it was at the top of its powers. The British Empire had crumbled after the Second World War and this was felt strongly in cities such as Manchester, which was centred on the manufacturing industry. And with no market for the sale of their products was now left to rot.18 The idea that Manchester’s industrial history is indigenous to only them and that it is a large part of their identity can be explained through means of an invention of tradition. The city has a strong historical connection with industry, that is true, but it was not the only industrial city in England. According to Cecily

15

Ibid. p. 63.

16

A. Lamont, ‘Musical Identities and the School Environment’ in: R. MacDonald et al., Musical Identities, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 56.

17_{D. Haslam, Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City, p. xii.}

18_{W.D. Rubinstein, Capitalism, culture, and decline in Britain: 1750-1990, London:}

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Morrison local traditions like these have been invented and kept in place by certain bodies.19 In this creation of a historical tradition, making a core body of ‘folk music’ is of importance. If a local or national type of music can be invented, then this is probably also the case for Manchester music. The roots of Manchester music claim to lie in being an industrial city, and being anti-establishment because of a created North-South divide in England.20 In Eric Hobsbawm’s work, The Invention of Tradition music, history and invented traditions are closely tied together.21 This should be duly noted when one speaks about Manchester music, a term that ties local history and music together in one phenomenon. Let us first speak about the social-political and economical history of Manchester in the period before Manchester music.

The South East of England was the only region that could cling to the service industry and still prosper after the war had ended. It was between 1960 and 1970 that the United Kingdom lost its leading position in Europe in the manufacturing industry. We see that in 1951 the UK is still the biggest manufacturing nation of Europe with Germany creating 78 per cent of what the UK manufactured. By 1964 Germany manufactured 117% of what was manufactured in the UK.22 The fragmentation of the British Empire started to develop. There was the Suez debacle of 1956, where people had to take a stand in British unity; this and other things caused Britain to slip down the international league table of living standards.23 Countries such as Germany, where the Ruhrgebiet was growing fast in production, were overtaking them. This also meant that the area near the Ruhr was now one of Europe’s biggest industrial and polluted areas, one would have thought. But in 1957 it was said that the greater Manchester area, being smaller than the Ruhrgebiet, was more polluted and filled with more smog than the

19_{C. Morrison, ‘Culture at the core: Invented Traditions and Imagined Communities’,}

International Review of Scottish Studies, no.1 (2003),

http://www.irss.uoguelph.ca/article/view/174/215 (accessed 10-06-2015).

20_{C. Aslet, Anyone for England: A search for British Identity, London: Little Brown &}

Company 1997, p. 220.

21

E. Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992, p. 6.

22

B.W.E. Alford, Britain In The World Economy Since 1880. London: Longman 1996, p. 326.

23

R. L. Martin ‘The contemporary debate over the North-South divide: images and realities of regional inequality in late-twentieth-century Britain’, in: A. Baker and M. Billinge, Geographies of England: The North-South Divide, Imagine and Material, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 15.

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Ruhrgebiet itself.24 The state of the welfare state was getting worse and worse during the sixties and the economy was falling apart, fuelled by the depression. The government had less money to spend on healthcare and people that already had limited means, now had even less means.25 The Conservative government of 1957-64 had a lot of crises such as a revaluation of the Pound Sterling, cuts in the welfare budget and economic stagnation.26 It was the culmination of these things that made the industrial north a tough place to live, especially for those of the lower classes.

A lot of documentaries about Joy Division, The Smiths and Factory Records for instance, start with black and white images of these murky streets and factories, smoke coming out of chimneys, people coming out of a factory, and dirty streets that no child plays on. 27 Some feel that these images have become cliché in the way we view the North after the Second World War. But to those who were there, and lived there, the North was a place of true grimness.28 The factories were often old and badly maintained. The black and white images of the smoking chimneys and muddy grey streets do not make the city very attractive. The ‘law of the handicap of a head start’ is a stamp that can be put on a city like Manchester. In the nineteenth century the city flourished like no other and was one of the world most thriving cities both economically and technically. Jan Romein’s work on why this was the cause for the city and many other cities in England to turn into a grey slum-like town was ground-breaking and is still useful. Romein states that even though Great Britain had a leading role in the industrialization of production, it lacked distinctive qualities in other sectors such as banking. In the end, just being industrially strong was not enough and Great Britain lost its leading position in industry as well, other countries could now produce with the same means and had more structure.29 Other scholars have held on to this theory that explains the

24_{L. Grant, Reclaiming East Manchester: Ten Years of Resident-led Regeneration,}

Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications 2010, p. 24.

25

G. Finlayson, Citizen, State, and Welfare in Britain, 1830-1990, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994, p. 345.

26

Daunton, M., ‘Rethinking Conservative Taxation Policy, 1960-1970’, in: M. Francis & I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, The Conservatives in British Society, 1880-1990,

p. 265.

27

BBC 4, Factory Records: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays, 2007.

28_{P. Morley, The North (and almost everything in it), London: Bloomsbury 2014.}

p. 14.

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decline of Britain and it being overtaken by other nations in Europe, North America and Asia. The structure of the economy was out-dated and inefficient and this left the country in a state of backwardness in the decades after the Second World War.30 Even though Queen Victoria had been dead since 1901, the ghost of the Victorian age was finding it hard to leave Manchester.

‘Our city hobgoblins. They'll get yer, Said Queen Victoria

It's a large black slug in Piccadilly, Manchester. Our city hobgoblins, And they say, we cannot walk the floor at night in peace. At night in peace.’31

‘My Childhood is streets upon streets upon streets. Streets to define you and streets to confine you, with no sign of motorway, freeway or highway. Somewhere beyond hides the treat of the countryside, for

hour-less days when rains and reins lift, permitting us to be amongst people who live surrounded by space and are irked by our face. Until then we live in forgotten Victorian knife-plunging Manchester, where everything lies wherever it was left over one hundred years ago.’32

As becomes clear from these quotes, the city was left to rot in the second half of the twentieth century. It was not only Manchester, but the whole north of England was suffering from politics, economics and social culture in England. Not a lot was done to avert this on-going crisis in the North its industrial cities. If we focus on the North, and on Manchester, what did this economic decline mean for the region, and the people living in it?

The North was a region that relied mostly on industry. With the government and services being located in London, and the agriculture being located in the countryside, England looked towards northern cities such as Manchester for their industry.33 The decline of the economy was felt the hardest in the North.

30

M. Dintenfass, The Decline of Industrial Britain: 1870-1980, London: Routledge 1992, p. 70.

31

The Fall – City Hobgoblins, Grotesque, London: Rough Trade 1980, Play Thesis cd #3.

32_{S.P. Morrissey, Morrissey: Autobiography, p. 3.}

33_{L. Nevarez, ‘How Joy Division Came to Sound Like Manchester: Myth and Ways of}

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Aristocratic, upper-class children were sent into business and banking instead of the industry after their parents saw that industry was getting less and less lucrative, this left the North and most of its inhabitants in economic and social isolation. Not only did they miss a connection with the South, they earned a lot less on average in the North as well. The average wages were very low in comparison to the South in 1969, a study showed.34 Inequality and the North-South income gap became a subject of not only social significance but also in scholarly research.35 This, and the emergence of popularist account in the press made the gap very apparent to the inhabitants of the North during the 1970s.36

1.2 Social awareness and anti-establishment

What did this decline mean for the state of the country, politically and socially? Having lost its economic position, England began to fragment, and the North got a bigger voice of its own. The gap between the rich, conservative south and the industrial, workingman’s north became more and more evident. This started to develop early after the Second World War, when contributions to the war effort of industrial cities were all but forgotten. It always starts with small things, such as not bestowing the title of ‘right honourable’ to the Mayor of Liverpool and Manchester in 1953. Even though Liverpool and Manchester were major cities, London saw a difference between them and the Northern cities. Their relevance stemmed back to the industrial evolution, and now that they were starting to decline, they were not worth certain titles.37

The North, that still needed industry to support itself, saw itself falling behind with the renewing south where the service sectors were now taking over. This caused for a big social divide with a still functioning south and a not so functioning north. The unemployment rate in the North was far higher than in the

34

R.W. Breach & R.M. Hartwell, British Economy and Society, 1870-1970, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1972, p. 355.

35

D. Dorling, ‘Distressed times and areas, 1918-1971’ in: A. Baker and M. Billinge, Geographies of England: The North-South Divide, Imagine and Material, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 44.

36

R. L. Martin ‘The contemporary debate over the North-South divide: images and realities of regional inequality in late-twentieth-century Britain’, in: A. Baker and M. Billinge, p. 17.

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South. People died earlier in the North, on average.38 Infant mortality rates in the Northwest were 37 per cent higher than in East Anglia for instance.39 These things were noticed in the North and in cities such as Manchester. Even though people do not always live by numbers, the North was now beginning to feel more and more alienated and started to distance themselves as their own entity. The north was poor, the South was rich, the north relied on industry, the South relied on service, the north was Labour, the South was Conservative, these types of comparisons were made a lot in the Northern age of social consciousness.40 They were no longer English they were men from the North. Fuelled by the upcoming power of the media, the people in the lower classes of northern society and Manchester became more aware of their position in comparison with the rest of the country. What we see from the post-war period onwards is that the construction of an identity through numbers, figures and symbols had already started around the 1960s. The next twenty years this construction started growing and taking a place in the minds of the people in the North and the Mancunians. By the end of the 1970s an ‘imagined community’ was created because of the social, political and economical circumstances that the Mancunians were living in. Just like a national identity, the identity of those living in Manchester, now feeling estranged from the rest of England, was built up through symbols and politics creating a comradeship amongst those who felt they were one community, even though knowing everyone in Greater Manchester is impossible, making the community a construct of the inhabitants minds.41 This would only progress further in the eighties and start of the nineties when Thatcher came to power with the imposition of new laws and when later the musical boom would take place in Manchester. By the end of the seventies this was already being constructed slowly but steadily, and by 1978-1979 the people of England, and the North, would reshape their identities once again.

38

D. Dorling, ‘Distressed times and areas, 1918-1971’ in: A. Baker and M. Billinge, p. 57.

39

M. Anderson, ‘British Population History, 1911-1991’, in: M. Anderson, British Population History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, p. 375.

40_{Ibid. p. 45.}

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The ‘winter of discontent’ took place in 1978-1979. It was the winter when unions went on strike all over the country because of a too small rise in wages.42 This meant that in Manchester, an attitude of being anti-establishment grew. The people in the North became more aware of their isolation in the North and their small influence on British politics. The ‘winter of discontent’ and problems over a referendum in Scotland meant the end of the rule of Labour in Great Britain and started a eighteen year period of rule by the Conservatives.43 James Callaghan was voted out of government by a posed motion of no confidence of Thatcher with a vote difference of only one. The vote ended with 311 ‘ayes’ and 310 ‘noes’. This meant it was time for a new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The appearance of Thatcher in politics and her multiple terms as Prime Minister made the social divide in England even bigger. Thatcher’s time in office was a nirvana for conservatives, but a pandemonium for the workingman. Thatcher’s reforms and policies on privatization, taxes and enterprise made life of people in the lower and middle classes harder.44 The feelings towards Thatcher in Manchester were to say in a most mild way, negative. Someone with a more outspoken opinion, like Morrissey, would say something more like the following:

‘The kind people have a wonderful dream, Margaret on the guillotine. Cause people like you, make me feel so tired. When will you die? When will you die? When will you die? When will you die? When will you die? And people like you, make me feel so old inside, please die.’45

Even though this song is from 1988, it shows the opinion of Mancunians towards the government. There was a mutual feeling of being establishment and anti-Thatcherism.46 Both the punk and post-punk movement came out of discontent of law and order society and British authoritarianism, according to Brian Longhurst as

42_{M. Pugh, State and Society: British Political & Social History, 1870-1992, New York:}

Routledge 1994. p. 298.

43

Ibid., p. 299.

44

M. Daunton, ‘Rethinking Conservative Taxation Policy, 1960-1970’, in: M. Francis & I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, The Conservatives in British Society, 1880-1990, p. 309.

45

S. Morrissey – Margaret on the Guillotine, Viva Hate, London: Rough Trade 1988, Play Thesis cd #4.

46_{P. Taylor, Manchester paid the price for Thatcher's modernizing,}

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-paid-price-margaret-thatchers-2547173 (accessed 16-06-2015).

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written in his Popular Music and Society.47 The build up towards a sub-culture had therefore already started in the 1960s and 1970s and it became even bigger in the 1980s. In the by-elections of Manchester Central in May, 1979, over seventy per cent of the votes went to the Labour party.48 Manchester was, and still a city where the Labour party has by far the most votes. In the 2015 elections, Labour grabbed hold of 53% of the votes in Manchester Central.49 Being a workingman’s city, Mancunians saw their role in British society diminish in the 1970s and 80s. The Conservatives and Thatcher were under the impression that the decline of the North was ‘economic justice’, for they had been the richest part of the country during the days of the industrial revolution, according to them ‘now it was their turn’.50 The North, and especially those who were less fortunate needed a way to express themselves to get out of the claws of conservatism that were oppressing them. It was because of an evolution of self-awareness amongst the people of the North and Manchester, over the course of more than thirty years after the Second World War, which slowly made the people from the North feel like their own entity. It is said that alienation can be placed in two different categories. The first is estrangement experienced as a result of social and structural position.51 This is precisely what happened to the adolescents living in Manchester in the 1970s and 1980s; they felt estranged from the rest of functioning England. The second type of alienation is placed in the social psychological spectrum. They deal with the individual’s internal sense of estrangement.52 This type of estrangement we see in the younger years of Morrissey for instance. According to David Byrne, alienation also plays a big role in the creation of a music scene. Alienation to the rest of the country and other mainstream music styles is the cause of people to create and join a scene.53 He would roam the street of Manchester by himself, in total isolation, for many years in his youth.

47_{B. Longhurst, Popular Music and Society, Cambridge: Polity Press 2007, p.215.} 48_{UK General Election results May 1979,}

http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/ge79/i14.htm (accessed 22-05-2015).

49

2015 UK Election Results, UK Polling Report,

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/manchestercentral/ (accessed 22-05-2015).

50

R. L. Martin, The contemporary debate over the North-South divide: images and realities of regional inequality in late-twentieth-century Britain, p. 19.

51

J. S. Epstein, Youth Culture: Identity in a postmodern world, Malden: Blackwell Publishers 1998, p. 4.

52_{J. S. Epstein, Youth Culture: Identity in a postmodern world, p. 5.}

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The self-awareness amongst the youth in Manchester was gained through accounts in the press, politics and in research, which showed a big difference between the North and south of England, and left the North in an economically and socially bad position. It was with this imaging that started in the post-war period, that the creation of the Manchester musical identity started. With the use of ‘real’ statistics, the North and Manchester were brought down and the image of a separate, indigenous north was created. Since then it has become a significant component of geographical thinking and imaging in Britain, existent or non-existent.54

It was in this state of backwardness, despair and isolation that creativity, people and music came together in the Northern industrial city of Manchester, that the youth was finally able to express this dreadful situation, through music, and culture. It matters to have an accurate description of the evolution of social and economic circumstances in the North, and especially Manchester, if one wants to understand how the popular culture and music scene in Manchester became the way it did. Because from this rotten, polluted soil of a crumbling city, from its ashes arose a new Manchester, a Manchester where misfits and social outcasts such as punks were able to become the stars of the city.

Part 2: The music of Manchester, Joy Division to Oasis

2.1 Music and cultural identity

It is safe to say that music has played a vital role in Manchester since 1976. Especially the youth has expressed themselves strongly through music since the famous Sex Pistols gig. It is both at the personal and collective level that popular music is an integral component of processes through which cultural identities are formed.55 It was especially the youth in Manchester, who felt alienated and estranged from the rest of England that needed music as an expression of their identity. Music creates many sorts of identities, from a national level, down to a very small sub-cultural level. Manchester in this case can be placed in between.

54

A. Baker and M. Billinge, Geographies of England: The North-South Divide, Imagine and Material, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 5.

55_{J. Connell & C. Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London:}

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Because the Manchester music scene is local, but also worldwide, it is pop music, but can also be divided in many smaller sub-genres such as punk, post-punk, house, indie, rock and many others. Music however, remains one of the most important cultural spheres in which identities are constructed, challenged, taken apart and reconstructed.56 The contributions of Connell and Gibson on music and identity give some very good insights to the role of music as an important contributor to cultural identity. In the globalizing post-war world, music has received a non-segregating and uniting function, according to G. Folkestad. Beforehand, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, music had mostly been used to unite nations under one banner.57 After the Second World War, music consumption and production became more sub-cultural. There was not one single body of music anymore in the post-war period, and certainly not in Manchester. Even though something like a Manchester sound, was being portrayed in the news.58

2.2 From disorder to post-punk

So, what exactly is Manchester music? Who were the people that made it and what did it sound like? It is important to have some basic knowledge of the scene from around 1976 until into the mid-nineties. So who was who, and what was what during these years? This will be discussed in the following chapter. By discussing this it becomes clear what kind of music comes from Manchester and why Mancunians take pride in their musical history. The music, from whatever type of genre, is part of their identity.

As a starting point, just so we have one, we will take the first gig of the Sex Pistols on June 4th 1976. It can be said that there was good music coming from Manchester before this date, surely you had The Hollies, the Bee Gees and 10cc coming from the greater Manchester area. But it was only after the gig at the

56

J. Connell & C. Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London: Routledge 2003, p. 117.

57

G. Folkestad, ‘National Identity and Music’ in: R. MacDonald et al., Musical Identities, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 160.

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Lesser Free Trade Hall that bands started spawning and calling themselves Mancunian. It is said by many that this is the performance that changed Manchester’s (and even the world’s) music for good.59 It is renowned to be one of the most important gigs off all time, only coming third after Hendrix’s performance at Woodstock, and The Beatles first gig on the Ed Sullivan show in America in 1964.60

The Sex Pistols were not from Manchester but it can be said that their performance that famous Friday night lighted a spark in those who were to become Manchester’s biggest stars in the coming years. Among those who were there were the likes Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner (Joy Division and New Order), Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto (The Buzzcocks), Steven Patrick Morrissey (The Smiths) and Mick Hucknall (Simply Red). The songs that were played by the Sex Pistols were pure punk and had nothing to do with what was by then seen as ‘pop-music’, it was loud, simple and the singing by Johnny Rotten was terrible. According to Peter Hook ‘they sounded like shit’.61 He was of the idea that, when these punks can make music, he could too, and he bought his first bass guitar the very next day. The Buzzcocks, Manchester’s very first real punk band, were already together by now and were to perform as a support act for the Sex Pistols that night. They felt that they were not ready however and Devoto and Shelley decided to cancel their performance and just let the Sex Pistols play. The Buzzcocks did however play at the second Sex Pistols gig in the Free Trade Hall on the twentieth of July. It might seem that the Buzzcocks were the first real Manchester band in the era of musical revival in Manchester but this is not true. First of all, they were from Bolton, so not officially from Manchester. What the Buzzcocks did was trying to be an imitation of other punk bands such as the Sex Pistols. They did not have their own sound and were seen as very basic. Besides, they signed with the London based label United

59

Interview David Nolan BBC Manchester,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2006/05/11/110506_sex_pistols_gig_fe ature.shtml (accessed 14-04-2015).

60

Live4ever.co.uk, The 10 Greatest Gigs Of All Time – featuring The Beatles, Oasis, Nirvana and Elvis Presley, http://www.live4ever.uk.com/2010/01/the-10-greatest-gigs-of-all-time-featuring-the-beatles-oasis-nirvana-and-elvis-presley/ (accessed 27-05-2015).

61_{Amsterdam Dance Event, Peter Hook vertelt (Dutch),}

http://www.gonzocircus.com/amsterdam-dance-event-peter-hook-vertelt/ (accessed 16-03-2015).

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Artists. The Buzzcocks could not escape the centrality of London and therefore they did not create a distinctive new sound, they just sounded like other punk bands from all over England and even all over the world.62 The Buzzcocks should be mentioned in any work in the rise of Manchester as the music capitol of the world. Even though they were not from Manchester, they were seen and projected as a Manchester band, they did not have the distinctive ‘sound’ but were Mancunian after all. The Buzzcocks were of some great importance in Manchester, but they were not the spark that lit the flame of Manchester music.

The band that did this was Joy Division, formerly known as Warsaw, formerly known as the Stiff Kittens. Originally the band consisted of Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner, who were looking for a drummer and a singer around 1977. The drummer they found in Stephen Morris and the singer they found in Ian Curtis, who would later take up an important role in the band. After fooling around for a while, trying to make something that sounded like punk under the name of Warsaw, they settled on the name Joy Division, not so gracefully named after the prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in Karol Cetinsky’s book The House of Dolls.63 They created their first EP named An Ideal For Living in December 1977. The EP was a poster folded in pieces so it would fit a record. It had drawings on it of a kid from the Hitlerjugend beating a drum on the front, and a German soldier holding a child at gunpoint on the inside. The men of the band folded the posters themselves and the drawings were made by Bernard Sumner. It contained four songs: Warsaw, No Love Lost, Leaders of Men and Failures (Of the Modern Man). Tony Wilson soon noticed the EP and their performances around Manchester and he put the band on his show on Granada TV, So it goes (after a somewhat threatening complaint by Ian Curtis). In 1978 Joy Division played their song ‘Shadowplay’, for the first time on northern TV.

Wilson wanted to do more in the music business than just host a TV show that showcased different sorts of music and bands. Wilson wanted to set up his own record label and have his own club. He found a club called the Russell Club in notorious Hulme where he started hosting his own ‘Factory’ nights together with partner Alan Erasmus. The nights did not attract a big crowd at all but musical

Listening in the Neoliberal City’, p. 56.

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progress was made.64 After Joy Division had a great gig at the Russell Club, Wilson offered them a contract, signed with his own blood.65 In December of 1978 the first EP of Factory Records was released. It was a collaboration of multiple bands that were signed to Factory such as the Durutti Column, John Dowie and Cabaret Voltaire. The songs that Joy Division played on the EP were Digital and Glass, these songs still sounded like punk but paved the way for a change in sound and music that would later be known as post-punk.66 Under the supervision of Hannet (who changed the sound of the band drastically), Gretton, Saville and Wilson the band created their first album Unknown Pleasures. It is seen as a masterpiece and is believed to be the first album that captured the spirit of the city of Manchester in a musical way.67 Peter Saville had created the iconic sleeve, with the visualization of the PSR B1919+21 pulsar even before having heard the album. The combination of the cold music and the minimal record sleeve was a match made in heaven, even though it was not planned.

This was the start of the post-punk era, and it took place in Manchester, under the wing of Factory Records. Factory was now becoming a label for Manchester bands and bands did not have to go south down the M1 anymore to sign a record deal with a big label. In between their first and their second album the band recorded their most famous song known to date ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, another song with dark and depressing lyrics, but a danceable rhythm.68 Joy Division recorded their second album Closer in the studios for Factory in 1980. It was a darker and gloomier album than Unknown Pleasures and turned out to be the last album of Ian Curtis. The deep depression caused by his strong epilepsy and an affair with a Belgian fan, Annik Honoré, turned out to be too much for him. Ian Curtis hung himself on the 18th of May 1980, just before the release of their new album and tour to America. ‘Atmosphere’, a song recorded, but not yet released by Factory, would become an homage to the singer and writer of the

64

BBC 4, Factory Records: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays, 2007.

65

J. Harris, Tony Wilson 1950-2007, The Guardian 2007,

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2007/aug/11/tonywilson19502007

(accessed 21-06-2015).

66

Joy Division – Digital, Factory Records 1978, Play Thesis CD #5.

67

L. Nevarez, ‘How Joy Division Came to Sound Like Manchester: Myth and Ways of Listening in the Neoliberal City’, p. 56.

68_{Joy Disivion – Love Will Tear Us Apart, Manchester Factory Records 1080, Play Thesis}

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band, who left the world too early.69 ‘Atmosphere’ is a beautiful, sad and dark song that captures Curtis’ feelings in the later years of his life.

2.3. New Order, new life

Is there life after death? Yes there is, Joy Division did no longer exist but they lighted a flame in the hearts of a lot of people in Manchester. The rest of the band could not go on under the same name and started a group called New Order, a band influenced by the sounds and techniques of the American dance and disco scene. Their most famous single, ‘Blue Monday’, was released in 1983 and still remains the best-sold 12-inch single of all time in the United Kingdom. An interesting note to this should be made, being that every single copy of the 12-inch record was being sold at a loss, because of a very expensive design by Factory’s in-house artist, Peter Saville.70 Despite their popular songs such as ‘Age of Consent’ and ‘Thieves Like Us’ New Order, and Joy Division before that, retained a sense of distance from the rest of the music scene, according to mainstream English television.71 It says something about the homogeneity in the music scene in Manchester, there really was none.

Creating unconventional but expensive to produce sleeves was one of Factory’s specialties. They made a sleeve for the Durutti Column made out of sandpaper that destroyed all the other records next to it in people’s collections. Making unprofitable sleeves and records was one of Factory’s many mistakes. The life and influence of Factory Records shall be discussed in a later chapter.

The Smiths were a Mancunian band of a different calibre, being pacifist, vegan and more energetic than Joy Division they attracted a different crowd. Besides that they signed a record deal with the London Based label Rough Trade, which made them more universal than Joy Division. They were however, from Manchester, and also took pride in being from the Northern industrial town. Morrissey said, in an interview with Jools Holland, after being asked what he missed in Manchester:

69

Joy Division – Atmosphere, Manchester: Factory Records 1980, Play Thesis CD #7.

70_{BBC 4, Factory Records: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays, 2007.} 71_{Eight Days a Week, BBC 2, May 25}th_1984,

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‘I miss really silly things about Manchester; I miss the kind of things that nobody could understand why they could be missed. I miss the grey slate of the sky, and I miss silly things about Manchester people. But you’re southern, you wouldn’t understand. When you’re northern, you’re northern forever and you are installed with a certain feel for life, that you can’t get rid off.’72

If it were not for their shared youth in industrial Manchester, they would probably have never existed. Steven Morrissey, a dreamy young man from Moss Side was an avid reader of writers and poets such as Oscar Wilde, Keats and Yeats and felt he was unable to express his miserable youth. Together with Johnny Marr he started to make music at the end of the seventies and The Smiths were formed in 1982 and only existed for six years before breaking up in 1988 because of disputes and legal problems amongst the musicians. The Smiths got their first national coverage on Top of the Pops performing their single ‘This Charming Man’ in November 1983.73 Morrissey would not be Morrissey if he would do something weird. He performed on Top of the Pops without a microphone, for if it would all be play backed, he did not need a microphone anyway. He wore women’s jewellery and was swinging gladioli around in the air. It was a performance to remember. Sadly The Smiths would not perform for very long. The Smiths released their first, eponymous album in 1984. The released their last album Strangeways, Here We Come, in 1987. In 1988, under legal disputes and other problems, they would finally disband and lead their own musical careers.

Morrissey is one of Manchester’s greatest artists, having released four albums and many compilations with The Smiths and many more solo albums; he is a very active member of the Manchester music scene. Morrissey was born and raised in post-war declining Manchester and saw the city at its worst. Because of this The Smiths were able to express misery and distress through music like none other They showed that music with very depressing lyrics about life and death can still be very danceable. They were able to show people what it was like to be

72_{Morrissey interview on Later with Jools Holland, BBC-two 2004.}

73_{The Smiths – This Charming Man, The Smiths London: Rough Trade 1984, Play Thesis}

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raised in dark and gloomy, post-war Manchester through their music. Many of the songs are about misery and pain, be it physical or mental and show the spirit of the city.

The Fall was one of the bands that formed after seeing the Sex Pistols in 1976, they still perform today, after some hiccup and breakups in their almost forty years of existence. In those years, Mark E. Smith and his men have released thirty studio albums. They were, and still are a very active band with a lot of followers. Their performance as a Manchester band has stayed a bit under the radar, however. Mark E. Smith has had a lot of different band members around him and has released on a lot of different record labels in different styles. He remained under the radar of the public and press by doing so.74

2.3 Madchester and the house scene

The Happy Mondays were a rebellious, drug-fuelled and almost uncontrollable lot that were signed by Factory Records in 1985. Brothers Shaun and Paul Ryder, together with some friends, started the band in the early 1980s. They proved to be the start of the Madchester phenomenon and grew almost hand-in-hand with Factory’s Haçienda nightclub. They were a band notorious for their drug use and upbeat dance songs such as Step On, Hallelujah and Kinky Afro.75 The band had an on stage dancer by the name of Bez (Mark Berry), all he did for the band was dance with maraca’s on drugs. It was Bez’s electric dancing together with the openness to drugs that made the band so well liked in the Manchester rave scene. The Mondays performed a lot in the Haçienda at the end of the eighties and start of the nineties and broke up after problems with the label and an album that flopped greatly. It is said that the coming of the grunge genre and rise of bands like Nirvana was the downfall for the Mondays and the Manchester scene in general but this is too one-sided.76 The Happy Mondays started in 1980 but did not really kick off after being signed to Factory Records in 1985. They released their first

74

D. Haslam, Manchester, England, p. 134.

75_{Happy Mondays – Hallelujah, Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches, Manchester: Factory}

Records 1990, Play Thesis cd #9

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album Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) in 1987, produced by John Cale. On the album was a song that would later define them as a band, called ’24 Hour Party People’. The song would also be used in 2002 as the title for the movie about Factory Records and the crazy lives lived by those involved.

In 1990 the Happy Mondays released their album Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches on which the listener would find one of their last and biggest hits, ‘Hallelujah’. After Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches the band had trouble creating new hit songs because the bigger part of them was addicted to drugs, one kind or the other. Shaun Ryder had been addicted to heroin since 1980 and took a lot of the other band members down in his drug use.77 They were sent to Barbados on the cost of Factory to record a new album in Eddy Grant’s studio, because on Barbados, there was no heroin. Having lost all the methadone provided by doctors to live on for a couple of months, already on the airport, the Happy Mondays men sought out the next best thing, crack cocaine. The band ended up spending a lot of Factory’s money, after they had cut the funds; they tried to sell some of Eddy Grant’s studio gear for crack. Almost all of them were doing drugs on a daily basis on the island. Paul Ryder would later say the following about it: ‘Most of the music was written in Barbados. We went with three songs. We went crack stupid – what a drug, crack cocaine.’78 The recording holiday of Shaun and Paul Ryder and their friends had become a fiasco. The Mondays came back with almost nothing but did release their final, flopped album Yes, Please? in 1992. Afterwards the band, together with Factory Records decided to end things and split up. The Mondays were said to have lost their edge and feel with Yes, Please?, it sounded empty and ‘druggy’.79 It was a combination of things that made the band split up. Shaun Ryder’s addiction, a costly record, a feud with Tony Wilson and a split within the group were some of the main reasons.80

77

M. Sawyer, It's great when you're straight, The Guardian, 2007,

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/feb/25/popandrock.features1 (accessed 27-05-2015)

78_{J. Robb, The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1977-1996, p. 279.} 79_{D. Haslam, Manchester, England, p. 192.}

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Another band that thrived on its Mancunian roots were The Stone Roses. These four men from the Greater Manchester area broke through at the end of the 1980s with their debut album The Stone Roses in 1989. In their own eyes, and in the words of their singer Ian Brown, they were the best band in the world.81 Their first performance on Top of the Pops on November 23th 1989 where they played their hit single ‘Fools Gold’ was a premiere of what was to come later, in Madchester.82 In the dressing room, Ian Brown was sitting next to Shaun Ryder, getting his make up done, for the Happy Mondays would also perform on Top of the Pops that evening in the famous ‘Manchester takeover’.83 The Happy Mondays were there to perform their song ‘Hallelujah’ that evening, it was Madchester at its prime, but the Stone Roses did not get there easily, and would soon after Top of the Pops split up.

The first years of the Stone Roses were troublesome to say the least; Tony Wilson saw nothing in them and boycotted the band for a long time. The Roses started to look more towards London and thought nothing of Manchester as a music city. They were met with disastrous reviews in their starting years from 1983 onwards until they got a new manager in the likes of Gareth Evans.84 Choosing Evans was the cause of them becoming famous, and also the cause their downfall. They signed multiple contracts with several record labels that exploited the unsuspecting four young men from Manchester in a major way. Especially their ten-year deal with Gareth Evans, a salesman more than a manager, was absurd.

The Roses eventually signed with Silvertone Records, where they recorded their first hit single ‘Elephant Stone’ and their first album The Stone Roses.85 This album is seen as a seminal album in British pop history and is critically acclaimed to be one of the best albums ever released. The album was given a perfect 10 by the influential Indie/Pop music website and magazine Pitchfork.86 Pitchfork can be

81

J. Tobler, NME Rock 'N' Roll Years, London: Reed International Books Ltd 1992. p. 463.

82

The Stone Roses – Fool’s Gold, Silvertone Records, 1989, Play Thesis cd #10

83

J. Robb, The North Will Rise Again, p. 309.

84

BBC 3, Documentary Blood on the Turntable: Stone Roses, 2004.

85_{The Stone Roses – Elephant Stone, Silvertone Records, 1988, Play Thesis cd #11} 86_{A. Granzin, Stone Roses Album Review, Pitchfork 2009,}

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seen as one of the leading figures in music criticism.87 Pitchfork rated about 80 albums with a perfect 10 in their 20 years of existence, five of which are from Manchester between 1978 and 1989.88 Considering all the albums released worldwide in the twentieth century this is a fairly high percentage.

Back to the Stone Roses and their first album. In the next chapter this album, and the way in which it was sold, will be examined further. It captured Manchester in 1988-1989 in the way in which it combined the trends of house music, with the post-punk history of Manchester. ‘It was the guitar record that caught the feeling of E (ecstasy red.) without going acid house; it was the future and the past captured in a non-stop series of fantastic songs that kept building and building into a masterpiece.’89 The album became famous and attracted crowd all over in England, selling out many theatres and concert halls all over the country. It was on 27 Maythat the Stone Roses performed the infamous Spike Island concert near Manchester, for 30.000 chemically infused young people. It was this concert that made them famous, even though the sound was terrible.90 Ian Brown came on stage with the words ‘It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at’ of which he would later say that he meant that ‘it was almost like if you weren’t from Manchester, you weren’t cool’.91 It marked the beginning of the end for the Stone Roses, because even though they released a second album in 1994, they were already having (legal) problems. On top of the legal problems with their manager and several record labels, the members of the band themselves were also breaking up. Their break-up was seen as very tragic, because to many, they could have been the best band of all time. 92 Even so, they were crowned the most influential English guitar band of the last thirty years.

One of the young adolescents in the crowd at Spike Island was Liam Gallagher. He would later start a band called Oasis together with his brother Noel

87_{J. Sinkovich, P. Ravanas & J. Brindisi, ‘Pitchfork : birth of an Indie music mega-brand’,}

International Journal of Arts Management, no. 2 (2013), p. 73.

88

Ratemusic.com, Pitchfork Highest Rated Albums of All Time,

http://www.albumoftheyear.org/ratings/1-pitchfork-highest-rated/all/1, (accessed 22-05-2015).

89

J. Robb, The North Will Rise Again, p. 307.

90

O. Clay, Widnes remembers Stone Roses gig at Spike Island 25 years on,

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/in-your-area/widnes-remembers-stone-roses-gig-9341572

(accessed 16-06-2015).

91_{J. Robb, The North Will Rise Again, p. 311.}

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Gallagher. Even though the Spike Island concert was a disaster from a musical point of view, the gig changed Liam’s life, after having seen Ian Brown; he wanted to make music as well.93 After the Spike Island gig, everyone wanted to be a part of the Manchester movement, everyone from all over the world wanted to be ‘Manc’.94 Oasis jumped into the bandwagon in 1991 and released their first album, Definitely Maybe in 1994. It was after the release of their second album that they became better known, however. (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? Was released on Creation Records in 1995 and contained such songs as ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’.95 Oasis were one of the last long lasting bands in Mancester, performing throughout the nineties and also after the millennium. In December 1997 they performed twice in the G-Mex Manchester Convention Complex. This performance was broadcasted live by MTV, showing the rest of the world what Manchester had come to after more than twenty years of music and pop culture revolution in the city. After a long time being together (especially in comparison with other Manchester bands), the two brothers got into a fight and Oasis split up in 2009.96 Oasis, kept the Manchester music legacy going for a long time, but even they had to split up after a while.

Then there was the emergence of (acid) house, which was being played in a lot of clubs in Manchester in the late eighties and early nineties. It was music at a higher tempo with a loud beat. One of Manchester’s own house producers, A Guy Called Gerald, released his worldwide hit single ‘Voodoo Ray’ in 1988. It was to become one of the Haçienda’s anthems over time.9798 Next to A Guy Called Gerald there were a lot more house records that hit the ecstasy filled dance floors of Manchester in the second half of the 80s. There is even a three-disc cd that was released in 2006 by Virgin (ironically enough) with all these Haçienda classics on it. The CD is filled with songs from Todd Terry, Inner City, Rob Base, Jaydee and other house legends. The house that was played came mostly from America

93

D. Haslam, Manchester, England, p. 214.

94

BBC 3, Documentary Blood on the Turntable: Stone Roses, 2004.

95

Oasis – Wonderwall, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, Creation 1995, Play Thesis cd #12

96

J. Klompus, Oasis split as Noel Gallagher quits band, Digitalspy 2009,

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a174501/oasis-split-as-noel-gallagher-quits-band.html#~pdYkJAkEvVkRM9 (accessed 28-05-2015)

97_{A Guy Called Gerald – Voodoo Ray, Rham! 1988, Play Thesis CD #13.} 98_{J. Robb, The North Will Rise Again, p. 241.}

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(Detroit and Chicago) so it was not particularly Mancunian, however, the house and house party scene in Manchester was very big and Manchester thrived on it in the late eighties early nineties. Another group that was making a name for itself in the house scene of Manchester was 808 State. With songs like ‘Pacific State’ they were one of Madchester’s own house formations. 808 State, just like A Guy Called Gerald stepped in to the house scene and made electronic beats with their famous Roland TR-808 drum machine.

There are a lot of bands that are not mentioned in the above chapter that are worth mentioning. The bands mentioned above are just examples of what Manchester had to offer from 1978 until the nineties. They were probably the biggest and most well known acts coming from Manchester, but there were many more that joined the Manchester music craze of the eighties and nineties. You had James, who released nine studio albums in nineteen years. They recorded their song and album ‘Laid’ in 1993.99 A Certain Ratio and The Durutti Column were both working with Factory Records; A Certain Ratio is still active to the day. The Durutti Column is still performing as well, be it in a different setting than the original. Let us also not forget Mick Hucknall and Simply Red. Hucknall was also at the Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4th 1976. He formed Simply Red in 1985 together with Elliot Rashman. Simply Red stopped performing in 2010 but announced the coming of a new album, to be released in 2015, for the sake of their thirty-year anniversary.100 Not to forget Inspiral Carpets who released four albums between 1990 and 1994 before returning with a brand new album in 2014. Inspiral Carpets came from Oldham in the Greater Manchester area and were formed by Graham Lambert and Stephen Holt in 1983. They were slumped a bit by the popularity of the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays but should not be forgotten.

What is interesting about the bands and music mentioned in this chapter is that their sound was all but similar; Joy Division was dark, and fairly slow whereas New Order was upbeat and had an electronic sound. The Smiths were a mix between

99

James – Laid, Laid, Fontana 1993, Play Thesis CD #14.

100_{P. Ellwood, Simply Red to Release new album Big Love, Entertainment Focus, 2015,}

http://www.entertainment-focus.com/music-section/music-news/simply-red-to-release-new-album-big-love/ (accessed 28-05-2015).

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pop and rock and basically started the indie pop genre. The Happy Mondays were an eclectic mix of house, reggae and many other genres that is hard to describe and the Stone Roses were more of a mainstream alternative rock band that combined post-punk with acid house. Throughout this, dj’s started making careers for the first time and took centre stage in clubs all over Manchester.101 What can be said is that a mainstream, glamrock or new wave sound, that was popular in the rest of the country, never really hit Manchester. Another thing that is interesting is that a lot of the bands mentioned in the above chapter broke up after fights between them or between them and the manager/record label.

In terms of having one similar sound, there really wasn’t one. Manchester from 1978 till the mid-nineties was a mix of several popular music genres that came together in a declining city. It was however all made under the Manchester, or Madchester banner, and accepted by the public as such. A lot of the bands and musicians either knew each other or influenced each other in one way or the other. If they were not influenced by each other, they were influenced by the city and the identity that Manchester was portrayed to have. Music inspires people and those who want to belong to a certain entity. The fact that bands such as Joy Division and Happy Mondays were branded as being specifically Mancunian made other people from the area want to become like them. It seemed like one strong Manchester unit that was taking the world by storm. This made Manchester in this period very popular, and therefore a good location and brand name for commercial enterprise. Not only did the music become a great part of the identity of Manchester and its inhabitants where it was not important before, it caused for a big economic boom during its best years.

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Part 3: The commercialization of Manchester music and pop

culture

3.1 Selling a city

How does one sell a city as a brand? How can music be sold as coming from a certain area? The music industry has drastically grown since the Second World War. Globalization has made music production and consumption a worldwide commodity. Music is one of the cultural resources in how places are perceived by the audience.102 Music and geography go hand in hand. Music, and the music business create and reassert local or regional identities.103 But it needs to be sold in the proper way for it to catch on. Manchester has been sold as a city where a revolution has happened in the music business. The city still attracts pilgrimage because of this. For Manchester, the history in music and the selling of its historical musical myth of the past is still of great importance. How is this local musical identity put together?

3.2 Joy Division and Factory, the first steps towards an identity

The idea of the punk movement was to be anti-establishment, to break with the social conventions that had been in place in England for centuries. Being anti-establishment was one of the reasons why some Manchester bands became successful. In the sixties a similar thing happened nationwide with the rise of bands such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Who and pirate radio stations. These bands that broke with social conventions in a still, very conservative country, became immensely popular. They were met by some resistance from the government, but they finally budged in 1966, when pop music was allowed on national radio.104 Trying to do something new and breaking with social conventions can be very lucrative, as we see from the example of bands from the sixties. They created new, unknown music and an image that spawned a

102

J. Connell & C. Gibson, Sound Tracks : Popular Music, Identity and Place (Critical Geographies), London: Routledge 2003, p. 221.

103_Ibidem.

104_{A. Blake, ‘Re-placing British Music’, in: M. Nava & A. O’ Shea, Modern Times:}

Doomed youth and the Factories of Manchester: Identity, music, media and social culture in a northern city, 1976-1997